The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

In Bykivnya Forest near Kyiv, people gathered on Sunday to remember the victims of political repression.

Unmarked graves lie strewn throughout Ukraine, but the Bykivnya Graves are believed to hold the last earthly remains of over 100 thousand victims of the NKVD. Until 1989 the Soviet regime lied about the graves, claiming them to have been the victims of the Nazis.

Those who came today to Bykivnya included people like Volodymyr Onuchak who believes his fathers remains may lie in this place.

President Yushchenko told those gathered that a draft law was being prepared to begin the real process of eliminating the symbols of totalitarianism and the communist regime in Ukraine. he said that he would submit it to the Verkhovna Rada as urgent.

The President also said that it was vital not only to name those murdered by the communist regime, but those who passed the decisions to execute people and those who carried out the killings. He promised that next year people coming here would see a wall of shame with all these names.